Sunday, February 24, 2013

Wish list.. not predictions. I have somehow forgotten what was the point of prediction. :P

1. Picture: Haven't seen Les Miserables yet. The ones I enjoyed most among the nominees were "Silver Linings Playbook", "Argo" and "Django Unchained". Most of the others were pretty good too. My favorite: SLPlaybook.

2. Actor: Joaquin Phoenix and Daniel Day Lewis were the two great performances here (again.. not see LesMis yet). It will be a really pleasant surprise if JP wins it, though I don't have anything against DDL. He was brilliant as he always is.

3. Actress: Not seen The Impossible yet (but heard really good things about Naomi Watts there.. will see this soon). Favorites: Jessica Chastain and Quvenzhane Wallis. Wallis winning would be awesome! though surely not going to happen.

4. Supporting Actor: All of them are really great, other than perhaps Alan Arkin who had the least substantial (but still really enjoyable and fun) role among the 5. Christoph Waltz and Philip Seymour Hoffman are my favorites. I am such a huge fan of Hoffman that I am in danger of jumping around in joy like a teenage fangirl if he wins. :)

5. Supporting Actress: Not seen The Sessions and Les Mis (and apparently Anne Hathaway is great here). Among the other three, perhaps Sally Field.. but really no real wish here.

6. Directing: my favorites: Ang Lee, David O. Russell and Benh Zeitlin. Perhaps Ang Lee's job was the most difficult and his vision for the movie made it really memorable. Having said that, Zeitlin's vision was also similarly unique in Beasts of the Southern Wild.

7. Original Screenplay. Django Unchained and Moonrise Kingdom were the most fun. though the award is not necessarily about "fun". still, would be nice to see one of them get it.

8. Adapted Screenplay: Not having read any of the books, it's difficult to say anything about how good the adaptations are. But in terms of enjoying the writing, SLPlaybook and Argo are probably the top ones. Though, considering how difficult it must've been to translate a story like Life of Pi from book to screen, perhaps Life of Pi is the biggest achievement here.

9. Animated Feature: Oh! What can I say? first time that I have seen only a single movie among the nominees. and that is obviously the Pixar movie. So, no real wish, but it is always nice to see Pixar win. I have heard really good things about all the other nominees too.

10. Foreign Language Film: Only seen A Royal Affair and Amour. No real wish. In any case, Amour might be the favorite by a long way, but this category is very frequently a surprise. Because it almost always consists of 5 really good movies, some of which only get wide exposure after the oscars. So, perhaps one of the other 3 might win. I'll be happy if that happens, not because the ones I have seen weren't good. Because that'd mean that there's a possibility an even better movie will soon come to theatres for us to see.

11. Animated Short: All of them were pretty good in their own way. (one is most beautiful. one is most innovative. etc.). But the most charming for me was Paperman. Hopefully they'll win.

12. Live Action Short: Again, all were nice and there are no real wishes here either. Perhaps I liked Curfew, Death of a Shadow, and Henry slightly more than the other 2. Probably Curfew just a bit more than the others. :)

Monday, February 04, 2013

I have my weekly group meeting on monday noon. This means that I am quite busy preparing my slides on monday before noon AND there is no time for the usual going out for lunch.. so, I try to take something that keeps me full till 2pm, when I can think about proper lunch.

Today, I decided to take a banana.

I came in, put the banana on the shelf above my computers and started to work. There was a lot of work. 2 things were being juggled together. Results were being calculated and slides being made simultaneously. Absolutely no time to even stand up, let alone thinking of the banana, even though the tummy had started to grumble. Finally, at 11:45, I found some time for the pre-lunch snack that was waiting for me in the shelf above the computers.

I looked up.

There was no banana.

"hmph! that's funny! I could've sworn that's where I had kept it!
Maybe on the other shelf?...
Nope! Not there either..."

It was then, as I sat there wondering where exactly my notoriously bad memory is failing me this morning (Did I forget to get it from home? Is that distinctly visual memory of keeping it there just a reconstruction from what I expected, rather than real?)... so, it is then that I felt a slight banana-ish taste on my tongue. It took me aback!

And then it struck me! Aha! If I had eaten the banana, where's the skin, eh? (Let's not think about the taste on the tongue for a while.. it is too traumatic to go near the possibility that I really might've eaten it and forgotten it) There was clearly no sign of the possibly-eaten-but-more-likely-vanished-into-thin-air banana's skin as far as I could see (which isn't much when you sit in what can only quite generously be called a cubicle).

This was a riddle, the only solution to which was that not only did I completely forget eating a banana, I also had no memory of getting up from my seat to throw the skin in the small trashcan in the corner of the office. So I, reluctantly, and very apprehensively (along with perhaps Bernard Hermann's music from a Hitchcock movie playing in my imagination) got up and took 3 steps towards the trash can.

There it was on the top. The unmistakable skin of the lonely banana from my fridge that should've been on the shelf above my computers covering the banana that I clearly had eaten but have no memory of eating.